


The Jedha Moon Jockey

by The Stephanois (ballantine)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Estrangement, F/M, First Time, Insurgency, Loss of Faith, M/M, Resistance, Saw Gerrera did not abandon Jyn, Slow Burn, Team as Family, Terrorism, eventually, well...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9081208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/The%20Stephanois
Summary: “Jedha’s not a priority for the Alliance at the moment,” he says, not looking away from the open panel.“Oh, of course,” the girl says. “It’s not like the occupation of this moon has anything to do with its extensive kyberite ore, which, if you didn’t know (but you should), the Empire has started to turn to for energy enrichment. And it’s certainly not like the Alliance’s apparent abandonment of one of the most revered symbols of the Jedi Order will have any impact at all on rebel morale in the Mid Rim — ”Cassian momentarily gives up on opening the cell door in favor of covering his face and groaning.





	1. the same old story

**Author's Note:**

> I blame this fic on [feoplepeel](www.feoplepeel.tumblr.com), who somehow failed to immediately discourage me from starting a WIP. 
> 
> (all the <3, obvs)

**Prologue**

 

The Temple of the Whills casts a long shadow, and it follows Baze wherever he goes. A cold, hard feeling has lodged itself deep within his chest, and he imagines it matches the Temple's desecrated halls.

Chirrut says the feeling is the Force calling out to him. Chirrut says a lot of nonsense like that.

“If the Force asks, tell it I am busy this afternoon,” Baze says.

Chirrut turns his face towards him. His forehead wrinkles slightly. “You have a contract today.” It's not a question.

“Save your fortune teller tricks for your customers. You need to eat tonight. Even you cannot sustain yourself on prayer alone.”

Chirrut opens his mouth, likely to insist that he actually _can_ because he is one with the Force and also the most irritating man alive, but then something across the street captures his attention. Baze is immediately on his feet and scanning the area, so used as he is to reacting to Chirrut's minute cues.

“That girl is back again,” Baze says after a moment. He eyes the small figure as she crosses the square. She's very young and comically dwarfed by her thick jacket but walks confidently with her head up.

Chirrut relaxes back and nods. “I passed word. I have the location of an Imperial official for her.”

He looks down at him in faint surprise. “Location? Since when do you involve children in resistance business?”

“She is destined to be involved no matter what I do,” Chirrut says placidly.

“I see.” His lips twist. “Did the Force tell you that?”

“No,” Chirrut says. “She did. Loudly, and at great length. I only stopped her to talk about her necklace, and before I knew it, she'd given me her entire life story.”

Baze watches her spot Chirrut and light up with recognition. She starts to approach them.

“It must have been a good one for you to cooperate.”

Chirrut's voice grows quiet. “Her mother believed in the Force and the Empire killed her.”

“So the same old story, then,” Baze says.

–

Jyn didn't tell anyone she was planning to murder a man when she left the house today.

(It's not actually a house. It's a bunker. But even people on Jedha tend to look suspicious when you go around talking about living in a bunker, so she's trained herself to use all manner of socially-inconspicuous codewords. House instead of bunker. Uncle instead of Leader. School instead of weapons training. That kind of thing.)

The monk didn't ask what she wanted the information on Chaffey Serth for, but she has a feeling that he already knew what she was going to do. She's still feeling the thrill from when she realized he didn't intend to stop her – that he didn't doubt her commitment or ability to carry out her plan.

Now all she needs to do is kill Serth, and no one else will doubt her utility either. She's not oblivious to the murmurings among the other Partisans, the growing suspicions surrounding her real last name. If she proves herself to be committed to the cause, they'll have to finally accept her. She has to believe that.

Serth emerges from the cargo ship exactly when Chirrut said he would, on the southern edge of the medina quarter. He is out of uniform and fidgeting under a robe like he doesn't much like wearing it. He's a thin, squirrelly sort of man. The only kind that the Empire seems to recruit.

Jyn tugs her hood further down over her face and follows as he sets off through the thick crowd on the street, winding past merchants and milling customers. She keeps a tight grip on her blaster and fights the urge to freeze up every time she passes a stormtrooper.

After ten minutes, she starts to worry that Serth has somehow cottoned on to her pursuit. He certainly seems to be taking a very strange route, one that's full of circuitous turns, and she nearly loses him once when he doubles back on a street.

It's not until he arrives at a small dark alcove off the main business district that she realizes that the reason for his furtiveness is that he's meeting someone. And he doesn't look too happy about it, either.

Jyn glances around before ducking behind a pile of burnt-out generators. She edges closer for a better look.

The other person is a human boy. He's wearing an unmarked fur-lined flight jacket and an expression of controlled quiet. This expression does not change as Serth leans in and starts whispering to him in high agitation.

Perhaps the boy is one of the smugglers Serth works with, she thinks.

Chaffey Serth is corrupt through and through; when he's not overseeing shipments of kyber, he's stripping the Temple of all remaining artifacts and selling them off to the highest bidder. His activities are not a well-kept secret among the residents of NiJedha, and he is reviled from all sides.

His death will make for a perfect statement that Jedha is by no means ready to capitulate to the Empire.

The boy has got a hand on Serth's upper arm and is speaking very intently. In contrast to the older man, he is quite calm. Jyn doesn't know if he deserves to die. He's clearly working with Serth, so the odds are good – but that isn't a decision she's ready to make at the moment.

It's a good thing she's such a good shot.

She raises her blaster, takes aim, and fires once. In the comparative quiet of the alley, the sound is isolated and obvious. She watches blood bloom on the left side of Serth's chest and for a single moment feels absolutely nothing at all. She can only assume the relief and triumph will trickle in later.

Serth collapses forward against the boy, who stares down at him for only a second before shoving the body off and pulling out his own gun. He must have some kind of training, because he automatically zeroes in on the direction of the blast and her hiding spot.

“Reveal yourself,” he calls out. “Or I'll light those generators up and look for your burnt body later.”

Jyn slowly stands up, her blaster still trained carefully on him. “I don't think you'd do that,” she says. “You obviously didn't want to attract any attention, otherwise you wouldn't have met here in the first place.”

The boy studies her, looking tense and irritated. “Seeing how you just killed my contact, attention is no longer a main concern.”

“Contact?” Jyn says, confused, but then there are stormtroopers at both ends of the alley ordering them to halt and drop their weapons and she doesn't get an answer.

–

It's not the first time Lieutenant Cassian Andor has been tossed bleeding into a cell, and he'll be damned if it's his last.

He waits ten minutes after they've been left to rot before he starts feeling around the base of the walls for a telltale chip of a panel. These old moon settlements often put their some of their more delicate wiring on the inside, to better protect them from the elements – it won't be anything so useful as the wiring to the door locks, but he'll see what else he can rig up.

The girl who just ruined months of careful intelligence work sits back on the cell bench and watches him. A stormtrooper had backhanded her for being impertinent, and her right eye is quickly swelling shut. She doesn't appear to mind.

“Why were you meeting with Serth?”

“Why did you kill him?” he counters, glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Because he was corrupt,” she says. “He's been stealing artifacts from the Temple of the Whills. You called him a contact – what were you doing with him? Are you a smuggler? Do you work for the Empire?”

He feels the usual twinge of nausea at the idea that anyone might look at him and think _collaborator_. He shakes off the feeling and says, “He was corrupt, as you say. I was blackmailing him.”

“Wait.” The girl sits up, eyes wide. “Are you — you _are_.”

Cassian doesn’t tense up or do anything but continue to look at her blandly.

“You’re with the Rebel Alliance, aren’t you.” She leans forward and whispers excitedly, “We’re on the same side — I mean. Sort of. Your bunch move a little too slow to really be effective, but — ”

He can’t help it; he breaks and pulls a slight face. “Oh. You’re one of Saw Gerrera’s little fanatics. I should have known.”

Suddenly the complete collapse of all his plans makes perfect sense.

He hasn't had a chance to fully consider the ramifications of what's happened. Just thinking about it makes him want to curse – news of the assassination will get out. Who knows how much of his nascent network in the system will now go to ground after such a high-profile cock-up.

His fingers trip over a notch; it's a panel. He makes quick work of prying it off, glad to have something else to focus on.

“Fanatics?” the girl echoes. She sounds like she's never heard a single word uttered against her leader, or ever contemplated the possibility that anyone might disapprove of his tactics. Whichever it is, the confusion doesn't hold her at bay for longer than a second before she's sitting forward again and asking:

“So does you being here mean the Rebellion is done turning a blind eye to what’s happening on Jedha?”

“Jedha’s not a priority for the Alliance at the moment,” he says, not looking away from the open panel.

“Oh, of _course_ ,” the girl says. “It’s not like the occupation of this moon has anything to do with its extensive kyberite ore, which, if you don’t know (but you should), the Empire has started to use for some kind of new energy enrichment. And it’s _certainly_ not like the Alliance’s apparent abandonment of one of the most revered symbols of the Jedi Order will have _any_ impact at _all_ on Rebel morale in the Mid Rim — ”

Cassian momentarily gives up on poking through the wiring in favor of covering his face and groaning.

The girl’s rant comes to a sudden halt. But the blessed silence lasts for only a moment before she says frostily, “Well, I’m not wrong, am I.”

“What you _are_ is brainwashed by the Partisans,” Cassian says. “I shouldn’t be surprised that the likes of Saw Gerrera would recruit so young. What are you, fourteen?”

She glares. “I’m sixteen. And don’t go pretending you’re so much older than I am. You don’t look like you even need to shave yet.”

The comment pricks at his pride, but he’s heard worse from veterans in the field; he’s not about to be baited into bickering with a teenage girl. Instead of replying, he resolutely turns back to the wall panel.

There’s a rustling behind him, and when he glances over, he sees the girl has reclined back on the metal bench, arms crossed. She has the resigned look of a person who has spent many hours or even days of their life stuck in small cells. Knowing Saw Gerrera, he probably makes his acolytes sleep in cells as a first step in counter-interrogation training.

Cassian picks through the wiring and says, “For someone who obviously hates the Empire with so much passion, you don’t seem too worried about being caught in one of their holding cells.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Saw Gerrera will come for me. He always does.”

He can't make out whether the sterling belief in her voice is from past experience or just another outgrowth of her delusional hero worship.

“A personal rescue from the man himself. Are you his protégé or something?”

“Protégé,” the girl says slowly. A small, satisfied smirk curls her mouth. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Then it's no wonder why you obviously don't know what you're doing.”

The smirk snaps off and she stares over at him. She sits up again, an indignant flush slowly filling her face.

He continues in the same conversational tone, “You find an Imperial official with a dirty secret, you don’t kill him for it — you exploit it.”

She looks disgusted.

He turns back to the panel, although now his study of it is more pretense than anything. The girl is distracting. “Insurgency is dirty business. There’s no room for ideological purity. You often have to make compromises.”

She says hotly, “And I’m sure it’s easy to compromise something that doesn’t belong to you in the first place. This city died a little more with every artifact sold.”

And now Cassian is the one to flush. “You’re just a foolish child. You know nothing.”

“At least I know what I’m fighting for.”

He whirls away from the panel and faces her. “You call what you did today _fighting_? You’re stumbling around on an adult board, not even aware of what plays you’re messing up.”

The girl's voice turns strident. “What do you know of what I’ve been through? What I’ve accomplished — ”

“I know you’ve set me back months of painstaking work with your foolish bumbling.”

“How _dare_ — ”

With a high-pitched whine, the wall opposite them explodes.

 


	2. devotion was a good look on you

His ears are ringing, his hearing overwhelmed.

It was a relatively contained charge for such a small space, but it still puts enough debris and sand into the air to send them both to their knees in coughing fits.

Cassian pulls his shirt up over his nose and waves a hand before his burning eyes to try to clear the air. When he can finally see a little, his mouth drops open. Thankfully, this moment of bald surprise is concealed beneath his shirt.

The hulking armored figure silhouetted against the glare of the outside light can be none other than Saw Gerrera.

Gerrera lifts a foot and kicks at the jagged edges of the small hole he's created. Stone crumbles inward, widening the opening enough for him to climb through.

“Jyn.” His booming voice pierces through Cassian's muffled hearing. It's a commander's voice, one that instinctively makes one want to hop to attention.

The girl – Jyn – sits up with great effort. Even while her face twitches with the effort of not coughing, she still breaks out into a bright smile as she looks up at the man. She scrambles to her feet, and Cassian, not wanting to be seen huddled pitifully down on the ground while a child stands, hastens to get up as well.

“I took him out,” she says breathlessly between lingering coughs. “Chaffey Serth, Saw. I did it, I took him out.”

Cassian still can't really see his face, but he can hear the smile in the man's voice when he says, “We all heard. The Holy Quarter will be celebrating tonight.”

Jyn, if possible, only beams harder. Cassian glances briefly at her shining face and looks away.

Child soldiers make him tired. It’s been too long for him to remember if he ever smiled at a commander like that. Too traumatized at six. Too full of himself at sixteen. Somewhere in the decade between — perhaps.

“Next time, perhaps wait until he is in Imperial territory and use a grenade. Mass casualties obscure who your target was. Inspire more panic.” Gerrera speaks in the calm and indulgent tones of a schoolteacher coaching a favored pupil.

Cassian makes a disbelieving noise. He can't help it.

Gerrera turns as if only just noticing him. His arm twitches like he'd like to reach for his gun. “And who is this?”

Before he can decide what he wants to tell the man, Jyn blurts out, “He's with the Alliance.”

He fights back a grimace and straightens his shoulders. “Lieutenant Andor. Rebel Intelligence.”

“Is the Alliance spying on me now?” Gerrera wonders aloud. “Has it come to that?”

Cassian feels a trickle on unease. He darts a glance down to Jyn, but she's frowning at him too, like the thought hadn't occurred to her but she is now considering it.

“I was initiating contact with Serth,” he says, reluctant. No good intelligence officer wants to divulge information like this without getting something of use in return. “He had recently agreed to turn informant for me.”

At this, for some reason, Gerrera's frown deepens. Luckily there isn't time for further discussion – even with his deadened hearing, Cassian can hear the shouts and footsteps approaching. He turns from looking at the cell door to meet Gerrera's sharp eyes.

“Perhaps a change of venue?” he says evenly.

Gerrera motions jerkily with his thickly armored hand and says tersely, “Come.”

And Cassian isn't one of his followers, but he follows the man out the hole in the cell wall with as much speed as Jyn.

–

Some things, one never gets used to. As a man raised in the faith and trained since adolescence to be a Guardian of the Whills, it is a special struggle every night to simply go home.

 _Home_. The definition has changed so radically in recent years, it has rendered the word almost nonsensical.

From any direction, the walk requires twists and turns past rowdy dens and brewing fights. The neighborhood was once occupied by merchants and pilgrimage boarding houses, but many have been replaced with more opportunistic sorts, the type who are willing to shoulder the danger of proximity to the fallen Temple in exchange for prospective profits.

As soon as Baze steps foot inside the miserable hovel they now sleep in, Chirrut announces, “The streets are ringing with the word that Chaffey Serth is dead.”

The Guardian is seated on a stool next to their small burner. He looks quietly pleased. As if directing a child to kill one corrupt official makes him feel like he's done his duty and is still guarding the Temple.

Baze ignores the pronouncement and moves directly towards the sink. He needs to wash his hands; somehow, there is blood in the creases of his fingers, though he'd swear he never got close enough to touch the mark.

“Who was it this time?” Chirrut asks the wall of his silence.

But Baze still says nothing, just watches the blood smear and run from his fingers and thinks _I wish it had been Serth_. That, at least, would have felt something like justice.

When his hands are nominally clean once more, he turns around and says, “I must go to Questal.” Stated like he's taking a quick jaunt down to the base of the mesa. He watches Chirrut's face. “I leave tomorrow. Hopefully back within a week.”

Chirrut is silent for a moment. Then, “You are abandoning the Temple?”

He sets his teeth. He doesn't say that there is nothing left to abandon, because the proof of that lie is sitting before him. He repeats, “I will be back within a week.”

Chirrut visibly considers arguing but ultimately he chooses to sigh and stir the pot on the burner. Over his shoulder he says, “I know your faith will return someday, but I wish it would hurry up a little. Devotion was a good look on you.”

Baze watches him smile at his own terrible joke and thinks, _am I not still devoted?_

–

Gerrera does not lead him to their headquarters. Or, at least, Cassian gives him the benefit of the doubt and assumes not.

They creep their way out of the most heavily patrolled streets and back into the refuge of the bustling medina, where a stormtrooper could conduct house-to-house inspections for a week and still not find a criminal.

He doesn't think they will come looking for them now. Jedha is not so subdued that the Empire can undertake nighttime raids lightly. People are more brave at night, when they might quietly stab a stormtrooper through a gap in the armor and then slip away down some dark stairwell.

Ultimately they end up ducking into a small, dingy cantina. The other occupants take one look at Gerrera and then carefully pretend they didn't see him.

“Is this one of your hideouts or do you just have that effect on people?”

Gerrera arranges himself so he has a clear view of the entrance and fixes Cassian with a flat, unamused look. When Jyn sets herself up at his side, he is treated to two identical glares of disapproval.

“Why have you been sent here?” Gerrera asks. “The last time I told the Alliance that Imperial forces on Jedha required a full military response, General Dodonna laughed in my face.”

Cassian has met General Dodonna. He can't picture the man laughing, let alone laughing at the likes of Saw Gerrera.

He leans forward over the table and says quietly, “My assignment is to cultivate an intelligence network in the Mid Rim, so that the Alliance can keep an eye on Imperial activity.”

The assignment was not a punishment for what happened on Coruscant, General Draven had said. Cassian tried very hard to believe him.

“Keep an eye,” the girl says scornfully. He doesn't twitch, but it's a near thing.

“The Alliance prefers to have a decent seat for the final death knell of freedom in the galaxy,” Gerrera says.

Cassian manages to not roll his eyes; he is, after all, trained in deception.

“So you have come here to listen to gossip from low-level officials,” Gerrera continues. “Not to do anything to stop Imperial forces from strip-mining the entire moon of its kyberite.”

Cassian shakes his head and says, “It's not enough to know they're extracting kyber – we need to know _why_.” He looks between them. “Do you honestly think Jedha is the only world to receive a surprise new deployment of Imperial forces? At least twelve others have as well, every one of them less strategically significant than the last. And the Imperial science division seems to be moving around a considerable number of its personnel.”

“My contacts haven't told me anything about this,” Gerrera says, frowning. Jyn is now staring hard at the scratched surface of the table, finally seeming to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

“They're being very quiet about it. We haven't picked up any comms chatter, and several of the planets have had top-level security systems recently put in place.”

Gerrera mulls this over for a long time. Cassian fights to keep his posture relaxed, even though all he wants is to get back to his ship and start reassessing his plans. He also needs to check in with Rebel Intelligence and break the news about Serth. He's not looking forward to reporting another failure.

“I will permit you to operate here,” Gerrera announces at last. Cassian does his best not to grind his teeth at the generosity. He fails when the man adds, “But only on the condition that if you uncover actionable intel, you will share it with me. The Alliance may not have the mettle to confront the Empire head-on, but the Partisans do.”

Cassian doesn't see how this will end well for his network in the Mid Rim. Nevertheless, he says, “I'll have to run this by General Draven. But in the event that he signs off – how do you envision this working? With all due respect, you are a little more visible than I like my contacts to be.”

Jyn bristles like a little attack dog. He's been happy to ignore her for most of the conversation, but he now allows himself a second to meet her eyes with a small smirk.

“I won't be meeting with you,” Gerrera says. “Jyn will. There is no one I trust more.”

Now it is Jyn's turn to smile. Sitting next to Gerrera's armored bulk with the black eye in full bloom on her face, she looks unhinged.

“As I said,” Cassian says, biting the words off. “I will need to run this by my superiors.”

He hopes they do the reasonable thing and say no.

 


	3. day in the life

**Part 1**

 

Jyn wakes up to a nose that's gone icy cold at the tip. Her limbs, tucked close to her body under her woolen throw, are as close to warm as one can get without actually reaching it; she can feel the tremor in her calf and forearm muscles from spending the night tensed against the chill.

She doesn't usually permit herself to feel sentimental about old postings, but she's willing to make an exception for reliable heating. She would never go so far as to complain aloud. (She's not like _Codo_ , always sharing emotions left and right and never pausing to consider whether anyone wanted them.) But she can forgive herself for wishing, in that vulnerable second before getting up for the day, that the Partisans had better resources at their disposal.

But working out of a bunker in the catacombs was always going to be rough-going. The dead have no need for heat.

Well, nothing for it. She grits her teeth, levers herself up, and throws off her blanket. Frigid air rushes in, obliterating all the carefully cultivated almost-warmth.

Jyn wastes no time shoving her feet into boots and grabbing her thick jacket. She considers waking Maia, but the older woman is tightly cocooned in her own bedroll and sleeping soundly. She leaves her and sets off through the twisting passageways to look for Staven.

Staven is a senior member of the Partisans, and Jyn's known him almost as long as she's known Saw himself. He's a cantankerous old bastard, but he is also one of the few rebels who likes her and always listens when she has an opinion on a mission. He gave Jyn her first drink of fermented bantha milk two years previous, and he's always argued for her to be allowed to stay in the room, even when she was still as small as Weeteef.

(“What's a human child doing here?” she remembers a long-since dead Partisan demanding of Saw. “Who is she to you?”

“Don't you see the family resemblance?” Staven had interjected. “She's obviously his daughter.”

It's one of his favorite jokes to make, that all humans look alike. Jyn thinks this is rich coming from a man whose species has uniform skin and eye color.

“Why would you differentiate by _color_?” He would say dismissively. “It's the markings around the eyes that count, and none of you humans have any.”)

When Saw is off-world, Jyn goes to Staven.

She is unsurprised to find him hunched over one of the main generators, elbow deep in wiring and cursing up a storm in Umbaran.

“Generator's out again?” she says.

Staven shifts his weight and casts an irritated glance her way. “What else? You think I'm getting intimate with its innards for fun?”

She shrugs. “You know I don't judge.” She looks around the room at the other soldiers who are awake. To a person they are a scarred, battle-hardened bunch one should never try to cross, but today they appear a little diminished. It's hard to be intimidating when you're busy looking so miserable. “Is it just the heat?”

“No,” he grunts, twisting something and making a face. “Condensers too.”

That gets her attention. She straightens up. “Are you going to be able to fix them, or do we need to go into the city for water?”

With a sharp yank, Staven extracts a chip from the generator. It's blackened, the wiring connections along the edges half-melted. They both look at it.

“I think we'll need to go into the city,” Staven says.

–

A few years ago, when they were based very briefly out of Jibuto on Rajtiri, they recruited a new soldier named Kachi. Jyn thinks she was around thirteen at the time. She doesn't remember a lot from that year because she'd been very sick – some disease she surely would have gotten a booster for if she'd still been living on Coruscant – but she remembers Kachi.

Kachi was an eighteen-year-old human boy from some backwater trading post no one bothered remembering the name of. He'd been very eager to join up. His first day with them ended in a shootout in market with a patrol of stormtroopers, and he'd taken that as a sign that fighting the Empire was going to be every bit as exciting as he'd ever hoped.

...And then followed three weeks where they saw no action. The Partisans trained and maintained their weapons, but all other hours were spent dealing with the simple logistics of running a sizable guerrilla force – i.e. cooking, cleaning, and a lot of sitting around and waiting for good intel.

Kachi quickly grew disillusioned. He'd filled his head with dreams of glory and was handed stew-encrusted pots to clean instead. Their very next mission, he got impatient and rushed headlong into a stray plasma bolt before Staven could pull him back. That was the end of Kachi.

Jyn thinks about him sometimes, if only to reassure herself that she's different. She's lived this life for almost as long as she can remember. Nothing as big or powerful as the Empire goes down quick, and she knows that she has plenty more days like this ahead of her – cold, thirsty, stomach cramping from hunger, her blaster badly in need of recharging.

She deals with it, though, because that's what a soldier does. That's what Saw does, and he raised her. She doesn't want to let him down.

–

She leaves Staven to haggle with Rook, the only electronics repairman he trusts, and gets straight to work picking pockets.

She's usually reluctant to spend credits on water, but without knowing how long their condensers will be out of commission, she doesn't have much of a choice. Many of the Partisans are human, and they're a thirsty species.

“A _dumb_ thirsty species,” she mutters to herself. “Colonizing cold desert moons.”

“That is my home you are disparaging,” a familiar voice says.

Jyn looks up and immediately spots him standing a few meters away. She smiles and approaches the guardian.

“You know I didn't mean it,” she says. “If anything, it's a symbol of the strength of the faith, that people would journey here at all.”

Chirrut smiles. “You dance around your insults. You wait, little sister. Jedha has not yet shown you her beauty. She will.”

“I hope when she does, I'll be in a position to appreciate it.” _And not in the middle of a street battle_. She looks around for the gruff looming figure she's come to expect accompanying him. “Where's your shadow?”

Since he helped her find Chaffey Serth all those months ago, Jyn has taken to stopping by and visiting Chirrut whenever she's in town. If she has any credits left over from her errands, she'll sometimes buy two sticks of fried meat from the stall not far from his corner and share them with him. (She once asked what kind of animal the meat was from, and he made her guess for ten minutes before telling her the name of some fearsome local creature she was glad to have not yet encountered.)

Without fail, Baze Malbus stood guard nearby every time she visited. But not, apparently, today.

“He's busy,” Chirrut says.

“I kind of thought it was his job to protect you,” she says. She respects Chirrut, but the thought of a blind Guardian of the Temple of the Whills standing around alone so close to an Imperial-patrolled area makes her a little uneasy.

“Baze Malbus has no job,” he tells her. “He has choices.”

It would sound like a solemn and meaningful pronouncement, if he didn't sound faintly sulky.

She decides to change the subject, but before she can think of one, Chirrut's face tightens. It's the only warning she has before she is grabbed roughly by the upper arm.

“Filthy fucking pickpockets,” the man growls. “You think I wouldn't notice?”

He's human, clean-shaven, and has an Imperial ID badge hanging on the outside of his overcoat – a civilian contractor. Oh, yes; she had stolen from him.

Damn it, she thinks. Am I getting sloppy?

Before she can twist out of his grasp and reach for her poorly-charged blaster, the man lets her go. She stares in confusion as he stumbles back, cupping the back of his elbow.

The man jerks around to stare at Chirrut, who has his staff up off the ground for the first time she's ever seen. Before she can say anything to defuse the situation, or maybe just shoot the man, Chirrut _moves_.

It's almost too fast for her to track – one moment he is planting his foot square on the man's chest and kicking off in a spin, the next his staff is swinging in from the side, neatly knocking him about the head. It's all done with a precision she knows she couldn't have managed even if she practiced the move one hundred times over.

And just like that, the man crumples to the ground. Without missing a beat, Chirrut resumes his serene stance, staff once more disguised as an innocent walking stick. The crowd milling around them doesn't falter in its flow, but parts around the scene like a river does a boulder.

“So that's how you get your money. I had wondered,” Chirrut says, musingly. He pauses. “You don't steal from pilgrims, do you?”

Jyn stares at him, open-mouthed. Her shock is the only reason she replies honestly. “Only from that one sect that screams on the hour.”

Chirrut's mouth twitches up into a grin.

After another moment she collects herself and says, “I didn't know you could _do_ that.”

He hefts his staff. “Guardians are called upon to protect the temple in many ways."

“And some guardians were perhaps more eager than others in _this_ particular way,” a new voice says.

Baze Malbus has returned.

“Plenty of guardians spent their entire career without lifting their weapon once outside of ceremonies,” he continues explaining, though he's not even looking at Jyn.

“Those guardians grew fat,” Chirrut said, emphatic. “And slow.”

Baze steps neatly over the unconscious man on the ground as if he were no more than a piece of trash on his one true path. He gives Chirrut an unimpressed look.

“You claim you avoid trouble while I am away, and yet here you are having cleared the corner by ten meters on all sides.”

Chirrut makes a faint noise of disagreement. “Feels more like eleven.”

The tilt of their heads together is strangely intimate. Jyn watches them go back and forth like this for a few moments before she starts to feel like she is intruding. She is about to call her farewell and go look for Staven, promising herself to pester Chirrut at a later date, but then Baze is suddenly looking over at her, eyes sharp.

“You, Girl,” he says. He motions her closer.

Jyn bristles instinctively. She _hates_ being called that. And she doesn't like what he says next any better.

“You are still reporting to that Alliance officer?”

When she had told Chirrut of her success with Serth, she had also mentioned the arrogant lieutenant and what had happened after. But she hadn't put it like _that_ –

“I'm not reporting to him,” she says. She can hear the faint brattiness in her tone and despairs of it but can't seem to stop. “ _He's_ reporting to _me_.”

Baze waves an impatient hand. “I don't care about the particulars of your arrangement. But I thought the Alliance might wish to know that the kyberite mining camp just south of NiJedha will be looking for a new senior driller.”

Chirrut turns his face towards him, expression strangely knowing.

Jyn is nonplussed. “Why not take advantage of the lull in operations and blow the place?”

They both just look at her. And she knows Chirrut can't see her face, but she imagines that he is frowning at her very _soul._

“The strongest stars have hearts of kyber,” he says slowly. “You would try to detonate a charge above an exposed vein of crystal?”

Jyn tries to hide how disconcerted she feels; she is too used to Saw's meetings, where suggestions of blowing facilities up are usually met with, “When?” or, on very rare occasions, “With what?”

“Besides,” Baze says after a moment, “they would just set up another camp further out. And soon enough we would be back to where we are now.”

She says, “All right – I'll tell him about the camp. But I have no idea when he'll next make contact. It might be too late.”

She has only seen him twice since she killed Serth. Both meetings were over quick, and the lieutenant sped things along by being curt, a look in his dark eyes that said he'd rather be somewhere very far away. She didn't know if he was very busy or just liked to give that impression.

“You have no method of contacting him?” Baze says, skeptical.

She hesitates. Of course she can contact him – but Saw had made it clear that he wanted the intel to be a one-way channel. She doesn't know how he'd react to Jyn reaching out first.

Saw would probably want to blow the camp up, she thinks. He'd think the resulting conflagration would be a high-profile blow to the Empire. They would cover up the incident by claiming it was an accident, but people would talk.

Baze watches her, dark brow furrowed. Chirrut has folded his hands around his staff and is waiting for her answer.

She makes a decision. Saw trusts her to do that much, she figures, otherwise he wouldn't have put her in charge of this.

“All right,” she says. “I'll signal him.”

* * *

Cassian blinks awake and finds himself facing a grey wall.

He'd know the patina anywhere; he's in one of the base's temporary barracks. His small apartment an hour away from base has a similar paint scheme. He keeps meaning to change it, but he's home so rarely, it's just never a priority.

He sits up and swings his legs out from under the thin scratchy sheet. Trousers are neatly folded beside the bed; he grabs them and gets dressed. His mind is blissfully blank at the moment, but he knows as soon as he laces his boots, his mission itinerary for the day will start rolling through his thoughts, sweeping aside all sleep-induced peace.

He reaches for the boots.

“Andor?”

Captain Blunden, in the doorway.

“Sir?” Cassian straightens. He's acutely aware that his shirt is still half untucked. And his fly, down.

As always, Blunden looks like a man who hasn't slept since the the Clone Wars. Judging by the unimpressed look he gives the bunks, he doesn't understand why others aren't the same. He says, “We need you on Dennaskar an hour ago. Captain Frerrik botched the diplomat job. Badly. He needs extraction.”

Cassian nods. “On it, sir.”

“And for the record, this mission did not take place,” Blunden adds. His voice takes on an irritated edge. “We told Senator Litt we wouldn't move on this intel until after she was named committee chair.”

Senator Litt is known to be more skittish than sympathetic. She's nominally one of the Alliance's allies, but only insofar as it helps her maneuver with the more hard-leaning senators. The day the Alliance looks like it will be bad for her career is the day she starts wearing an Imperial pin on her lapel, and everyone knows it.

“No mission, understood, sir. Permission to visit Dennaskar for some rec time?”

Blunden hesitates at the door and throws him a warning look. “Don't say rec time. No one who knows you will believe it.”

And that, Cassian thinks as he resumes tucking his shirt in, has to make it into the top five of the most depressing things anyone has ever said about him.

Well. Top ten, at least.

–

Cassian is ready to be irritated at having his day taken over by a mission that is essentially glorified taxi service, except then someone tries to shoot him out of the sky.

The trip to Dennaskar had been uneventful until he saw the weather pattern raging over his destination. He slipped from the calm of the upper atmosphere straight into a roiling storm. Rain and wind lashed at the sides of the shuttle, and he had to use both hands to keep it on course.

He is passing over the capital when the shuttle takes the hit.

Alarms go haywire. He grabs the controls and spends the next thirty seconds stabilizing the shuttle. After the initial danger has passed, he checks the sensors and realizes it wasn't a weapons discharge, but lightning.

He tries to raise Captain Frerrik down on the surface, but the strike seems to have disabled his comms unit. He's going to have to try to fix the array when he reaches the rendezvous point.

He bites back a curse. His only hope now is that the storm will provide cover from patrols in the area. The diplomat's retreat is deep into the forested countryside and well away from any city lights.

Frerrik better be at the coordinates.

–

An hour later, he is soaked to the skin, his comms unit is limping past diagnostics but at least operational, and Frerrik is not at the coordinates.

It's nighttime in this hemisphere. With the thick vegetative cover on top of the darkness and rain, his visibility from the inside of the shuttle is severely limited. The proximity sensors are set to a fifty meter perimeter. All he can do is wait.

Cassian is good at waiting.

He flips the shuttle systems to stealth mode and gradually the hum around him softens to near silence. Within minutes, its quiet enough to hear the pounding rain and crack of lightning overhead. He settles himself back in his chair with his sidearm at the ready and watches the storm rage outside.

After some time (twenty-six minutes) has passed, he sits up. Two figures are emerging from the trees; they are only just visible in the darkness. A flash of lightning reflects off the hulking rounded shoulders of the Imperial droid.

He stiffens and gets halfway to lifting his blaster before he remembers that he'd heard Frerrik had been assigned a reprogrammed unit.

The shuttle door opens. The full-brunt roar of the storm outside seem impossibly loud after his vigil. Louder still, somehow, is Frerrik.

The captain stomps his way inside, every step heavy with water and bad temper. He barely glances around to see who his pilot is before he's continuing his rant, which gives the impression of having been started some time ago.

“ – fucking backwater guard units who'd shoot a cat if it meowed too loudly, whole place was designed like some ancient torture chamber you'd find in the Outer Rim.” He looks finally at Cassian and says loudly, as if he'd been arguing, “This wasn't my fault.”

Cassian blinks at him, expressionless. Meanwhile, the droid is stepping inside and securing the door. With the storm muted once more, there is nothing to compete with Frerrik's voice.

“It was _this_ one,” Frerrik spits, jerking his head towards the droid, who looks back at them both with cold, robotic guilelessness. “I think whoever did the reprogramming fucked up. When questioned by the stormtroopers outside the bedchamber, it _answered_. And then stopped me from shooting them!”

Cassian frowns and finally speaks, “It's not overcoming its hard-coding?”

Frerrik waves him off. “Never mind the loyalty sequences – the biggest issue is it won't shut up.”

“Pointing out your numerous strategic mistakes doesn't make me loyal to the Empire, Captain,” the droid says. “I compute probabilities of success; it's not my fault yours are consistently low.”

Cassian raises his eyebrows slightly.

“I said _shut_ _it_ ,” Frerrik shouts, clearly having reached the limit of his patience.

The droid shuts it.

Cassian resumes his silence and avoids looking at either of them. He turns back to the shuttle controls and focuses on flying up out of the storm. No lightning strikes this time, which is just as well, because Cassian doesn't know what he'd do if he ended up stranded for any length of time with Frerrik.

He's barely landed back on Yavin IV and handed the shuttle off to a member of the grounds crew when Blunden is walking up to him. He opens his mouth to report, but Blunden heads him off with a wave of his hand.

“Signal relayed here with your code. Your liaison on Jedha wants to meet.”

“My – ?” He breaks off, realization dawning and mood sinking. This _day_. He says grimly, “Gerrera's people.”

“Message said the matter was time sensitive. Refuel and go.”

“All right, tinhead,” Frerrik says loudly as he stalks past them into the hangar. “I'm taking you to get your circuits checked.”

The droid's tone is scathing. “Sir, your bedside manner isn't exactly putting a charge in my battery either, but I don't see you getting _your_ head pried open every other day.”

Call it an intelligence officer's instinct, but Cassian doesn't think Frerrik will keep the droid for another mission. He spares a thought for the unfortunate person who's going to get stuck with it, and turns back to his shuttle.

–

It's dusk on the moon when he lands, and he wastes no time sending a coded message requesting a meeting.

For some reason, all the calm he'd felt while waiting back on Dennaskar has evaporated. Perhaps he is worn from all the planet-skipping. It can wreak havoc on a body's internal clock.

He spends half an hour staving off impatience by practicing Huttese conjugations before he receives a reply signal, and then it's time to bundle up and set off across the frigid, desolate stretch between where his shuttle is hidden and the mesa of Jedha City.

Cassian is skeptical about this meeting. As a rule, he wants as little to do with the Partisans as possible. It's bad enough that he'd been assigned to Jedha; the far-fetched rumors and conspiracy theories floating around the Alliance all but guaranteed that the assignment would be the laughingstock of Rebel Intelligence. Not that there was much laughter to be had in Rebel Intelligence, as a rule. And while he hadn't let his reluctance influence his decision-making on the moon, he'd done his best to keep the briefings with Jyn – well, brief. He never allowed it to descend into the embarrassing sniping that had occurred in their first meeting, but the danger hovered over every sentence exchanged.

The city is the same. Cold, crowded, and filled with the restless, strained energy of a household whose guests have stayed long past the agreed-upon date (...Cassian saw a holovid once, he thinks it was supposed to be a comedy). Steam from vents and air-breathers' exhalations creates a semi-permanent fog through which he has to walk, eyes braced against the cold and straining to observe without being obvious about it.

Jyn's message hadn't given any hint as to what the meeting was about, just a set of coordinates for deep in the Holy Quarter. She said she'd be wearing green.

Yet when he reaches the coordinates, he is confronted with a crowd of over two dozen figures, all in green hooded robes. They are standing in lines three people deep, all facing the direction of Temple of the Whills, and performing a slow ritualistic set of motions.

“Wear this,” a voice says from his right. He glances over with his eyes first, in case the words were not directed at him – then he turns his entire head, because the man who spoke is staring in his direction with the unmistakably clouded eyes of one who is blind. He is holding out a bundle of green cloth to Cassian: a robe identical to the pilgrims performing salutations to the temple.

“I don't – ” he begins, but the man cuts him off.

“Wear this,” he says again, and raises his eyebrows meaningfully. “She said green would suit you.”

Cassian takes the robe.

He's too used to unpredictable missions to do anything but go along with the strange instructions. After glancing around furtively for Imperial personnel and struggling to fit the robe over his thickly padded jacket, he asks the man, “And did she happen to mention where she would be?”

He gives him a fainting mocking smile. “You are intelligence, yes? Figure it out.”

And with that, he turns and disappears into the crowd.

“Figure it out,” Cassian mutters under his breath, looking back at the ranks of pilgrims. But after a moment, he spots the anomaly and understands; one pilgrim in the middle of the second row is a head shorter and at least half a beat behind all the others.

He glances around once more before making his move.

It's a simple matter to slip between the rows, but squeezing in beside Jyn is a little more difficult. Judicious use of his elbow and the subtle pressure of his boot on the pilgrim to his left does the trick.

He gets a disgruntled glare from a pair of golden eyes, and he motions his apologies. Then he sets himself to following the dance of the row in front of him, as if he were merely a late, sudden convert to the order of – whichever of the hundred religions that comes to Jedha and wears green robes this is.

(Unacceptable that he doesn't know. He makes a mental note to brush up on his background research.)

After a few minutes of stretching their arms up to the darkened silhouette of the temple and then sweeping them down to reach for their toes, Jyn whispers to him:

“You are _so_ _bad_ at this.”

He grits his teeth against his first retort – he thought he'd been doing rather well, for a beginner – and instead murmurs back, “How about you quit wasting time and tell me why I'm here.”

But before she can, the group transitions to the next movement, which is at first deceptively simple-looking. The new motion consists of twisting their chests from side-to-side at the waist, all the while keeping both arms straight out, palms facing the temple. After a mere ten seconds, it creates a pinching ache in his shoulder blades.

Jyn keeps trying to whisper to him when she's twisted in his direction, but it doesn't work because he's also turned away. After thirty seconds of this, she starts lose the rhythm and, unintentionally or not, ends up facing his way while he is turned towards her. They end up practically nose-to-nose, both frowning at each other in concentration.

“The kyberite – ” she starts to say.

They twist away.

“Mining camp – ”

They twist away.

“South of the city,” she says, all in a rush.

They twist away.

“They need a – _hey, what are_ – !”

Cassian grabs her by the forearm and drags her out of the line, which reforms seamlessly and – it cannot just be his imagination – with not a little relief from their neighbors. After the first second she stops resisting, hopefully because she realizes it will attract attention.

He pulls her out of the main stretch of the street and up against the side of a building corner, where their green robes will help them blend in with the shadows. As soon as he lets her go, she punches him in the arm.

He doesn't strike back, but it's a near thing. He hasn't been punched without intent to inflict harm since he was six. But Jyn is not his brother.

Jyn hisses, “Why'd you do that?”

He shakes his head, mystified and fed up. “Why'd you choose to _meet_ like that?” He motions tensely back at the robes and the ...swaying. “Was this some kind of a teenage prank?”

“I was trying to be inconspicuous,” she says defensively. “I thought you'd prefer it.”

“ _Inconspicuous_?” he says before he can stop himself. “We looked like a pair of fools who spent the day chewing luna-weed and are now convinced we've felt the fabric of the Force. That's not inconspicuous, that is – ”

Cassian comes back to himself. He looks around, but no one seems to be watching. He hadn't been loud – training's too second-nature for that – but he had just said more words together than in the previous three days combined.

He needs to end this meeting and get back to Yavin IV, before he loses any more of his professional self-respect.

Jyn is looking up at him with wide, serious eyes. After a moment, her mouth twitches.

“What's the message?” he asks. “You know, the one that was so time-sensitive, you needed me to come and genuflect to a dirty, empty building.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Don't let Chirrut hear you describe the temple like that.”

“Who?”

“The man who gave you the robe. He's a Guardian of the Temple of the Whills. Or – at least, he was.”

“Is _this_ what you wanted me to hear?” Cassian demands.

Jyn straightens, irritation flashing over her face. “No. I wanted you to know – there's a camp just south of the city, one of their major kyberite operations. The senior drilling position has just opened up.”

Cassian pauses, thinking.

“Well?” Jyn asks, impatient. “Is that of any use to you? Can you get someone to go for it, someone who could – find out more about why they're mining the crystals?”

“Maybe,” Cassian says quietly, mind already racing ahead. He snaps back and asks, “How do you know about this? If the Partisans killed the old driller, they'll be on the lookout for double agents – ”

“We didn't do it,” Jyn says. “Chirrut – the monk, he has a friend. He said it looked like an accident.”

“An accident,” Cassian repeats. He knows what that means. Likely she does as well, though her eyes are unclouded by innuendo as she watches him, waiting for his decision.

“And when did this accident happen?” he asks after a moment.

“Yesterday afternoon.”

Even with the time difference between here and Yavin IV, it's too much. But when he looks at her sharply, she raises her hands.

“I signaled you immediately. Not my fault if the Alliance sat on it for a while before passing it along.” Her expression twists. “Guess a message from Saw Gerrera's people isn't considered _real_ enough to be taken seriously.”

She's likely not wrong, but he isn't going to tell her that.

“Then I need to move on this immediately,” he says. He starts to pull the robe off. When he's rid of the offending article, he glances back down at Jyn. She's leaning against the wall, eyes trained on the salutating pilgrims, mouth faintly downturned.

“You did – this was good,” he says. She turns and blinks up at him and he nods at her. The motion, and the words, feel awkward. “Good job.”

Jyn doesn't look pleased to be given credit. She just says, in a tone far too tired for someone so young, “Just make sure you get some use out of it. I don't want to let my friends down.”

It's strange to think of this young Partisan punk having friends. He'd assumed she was like – well. He'd assumed. That was his first mistake.

“And Saw Gerrera,” he adds, for reasons unclear even to himself.

She studies him for a moment, unsmiling, before agreeing, “Yes. And Saw Gerrera.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always dearly appreciated!


End file.
